Shooting Ducks

Having a whole WEEK OFF is just amazing! Suddenly, I have all this free time at my disposal! Of course, using this spare time for my hobbies is a necessary (don’t get to do that so often. That’s how this blog was born btw).

1/200s, f/9, ISO 100, Manual Mode

I my packed my camera bag (along with my headphones, they’re a must!) and went on a short trip. Destination – National park of Ramat Gan (Israel). It’s located near the Saffari – You could spend a whole day photographing there – but you have to go by car. The park itself has a lake in it’s center, huge lawns, plenty of trees, and, what I came for, ducks, geese, swans.. and more.

1/200s, f/9, ISO 100, Manual Mode

The birds in the park are used to human presence but are still not too fond of people getting too close. I used some biscuits as bait (Though I should have brought something a bit more healthier for them); keeping the ducks busy with eating was the way to take some close shots of them.

This is as close they’d let me get. 1/160s, f/8, ISO 160, Manual Mode

1/200s, f/8, ISO 100, Manual Mode

1/160s, f/8, ISO 250, Manual Mode

1/200s, f/8, ISO 100, Manual Mode

I used a Nikon D7100 with a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens. This lens is not an actual macro lens – it’s “half macro” – you can go up to 1:2 macro ratio with it. The minimal focus distance is 1.5m and 0.9m on macro mode, so I had to get pretty close to the birds for these photos.

Their feathers are way more colrful than you might think. 1/125s, f/8, ISO 500, Manual Mode

1/200s, f/8, ISO 100, Manual Mode

1/320s, f/11, ISO 100, Manual Mode

One of the many stray cats hiding away from the heat. 1/160s, f/8, ISO 100, Manual Mode

This was my second time at the park (last time was October 2015). I enjoy going there and will probably come back in the future (probably in the winter though, it’s so goddamn hot at the summer!).

Here are some more photos from today;

1/320s, f/8, ISO 250, Manual Mode

Playing with black and white. 1/200s, f/8, ISO 100, Manual Mode

1/200s, f/8, ISO 320, Manual Mode

High quality images will be avaliable on my Flickr account sometime later this week.